How to Paint Realistic Looking Eyes Using Acrylic Paint

The eyes are the most striking facial features and knowing how to paint it with a realistic touch will add the right kind of spark to the face. Painting the eyes can be a tricky subject since it requires finer details and requires you to understand how to mix the brilliance of colours for areas like the pupil. We can also make a painting for pictures by using Acrylic Paint.

How to Paint Realistic Looking Eyes Using Acrylic Paint

In this article we give you a step-by-step guide on how to paint realistic looking eyes using acrylic paint.

1. Outline The Eyes

A rough outline of the eyes should be sketched in the first step. You could take a reference picture or do a live painting — it depends on you. Take a pencil and sketch out the areas of your eyeball, pupil, iris along with the fine lines under your eyes and your eyebrows. Don’t put too much pressure on the canvas when you are sketching it. This could leave marks when you are painting over it.

2. Areas Around The Eyes

The area around the eyes should be painted before you cover the inside of the eyes. Keep the tone subtle. Don’t make it too dark or too light, but maintain the colour of your skin tone for the area around your eyes. You could highlight the lid of the eyes by adding some shadow to it but again, don’t overdo it. One tone darker shade than the rest of it is sufficient to highlight the lid. Learn how to blend in the colours so that no two colours of the skin tone looks mismatched.

3. Inside The Eyes

The area inside the eyes do look white but it is not plain white. If you observe closely, you will notice a greyish layer over it, which we often tend to ignore when we paint eyes. If you want to make the eyes look close to real, these little details cannot be ignored. While the bottom and top of the eyes will have a bit of shadow to it, the centre will always have the lightest shade, which is why the centre should be highlighted in a light shade.

4. Iris and Pupil

First of all, know that the edges of the iris and pupil should always be darker than the inner layer. You could add vivid colours to the pupil depending on how striking you want the eyes to look. The light around will make the pupil look big or small, so take care of that too. Use a medium tone colour to paint the pupil and iris.

The pupils will also have radiating lines in them which needs to be highlighted with precision in your painting. Observe these things closely! However also know these radiating lines are not perfectly straight lines. You could add colours like yellow or red to highlight them, that won’t be a matter of concern, but the colours should have subtle tone.

5. Eyelashes

Eyelashes accentuate the beauty of the eyes. While some people have really long and voluminous eyelashes, other have short and thin ones. When you start painting the eyelashes, start from the edges of the eyes. The eyelashes on the edge of the eyes are thicker and longer than those towards the inside. There is also a difference between the eyelashes from the eyelid and those at the bottom. The top eyelashes are thicker and longer than the bottom ones.

6. Touch Ups

Once the above points have been covered, you are almost done with your painting. Now observe closely if there are any touch-ups required in the painting and refine the eyes a but if you feel the colours are too shallow but then again, don’t make it a muddy mess with layers of touch-ups.

Painting the eyes need a striking balance and you have to know how to make them look expressive. Don’t make it look flat. When you don’t add highlights to the eyes, it will lose the spark and realistic touch to it, which is why it is important to observe and understand the importance of radiating lines inside the pupils, along with finer details like shadowing the eyelid and making thicker eyelashes on the edges of the eyes.